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Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

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Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#221

Post by stephbook »

> It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. If the spec defines precisely what a program will do, with enough detail that it can be used to generate the program itself, this just begs the question: how do you write the spec? Such a complete spec is just as hard to write as the underlying computer program, because just as many details have to be answered by spec writer as the programmer.

Joel Spolsky, stackoverflow.com founder, Talk at Yale: Part 1 of 3 https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/12/03/talk-at-yale-part-...

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#222

Post by CamperBob2 »

stephbook wrote: post #221

> It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. If the spec defines precisely what a program will do, with enough detail that it can be used to generate the program itself, this just begs the question: how do you write the spec? Such a complete spec is just as hard to write as the underlying computer program, because just as many details have to be an…

What he misses is that it's much easier to change the spec than the code. And if the cost of regenerating the code is low enough, then the code is not worth talking about.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#223

Post by stephbook »

h4ch1 wrote: post #9

You can basically condense this entire "language" into a set of markdown rules and use it as a skill in your planning pipeline. And whatever codespeak offers is like a weird VCS wrapper around this. I can already version and diff my skills, plans properly and following that my LLM generated features should be scoped properly and be worked on in their own branches. This imo will just give rise to a reason for people t…

> And whatever codespeak offers is like a weird VCS wrapper around this.

I'm still getting used to the idea that modern programs are 30 lines of Markdown that get the magic LLM incantation loop just right. Seems like you're in the same boat.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#224

Post by onion2k »

SpaceNoodled wrote: post #220
jrm4 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be very comfortable with - re-run 100 times with different seeds. If the outcome is the same every time, you're reliably good to go.

Even when it's wrong each time?

If it's wrong then it's not provably correct (for any value of 'proof').

How you define your proof is up to you. It might be a simple test, or an exhaustive suite of tests, or a formal proof. It doesn't matter. If the output of the code is correct by your definition, then it doesn't matter what the underlying code actually is.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#225

Post by mwarkentin »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #222
stephbook wrote: post #221

> It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. If the spec defines precisely what a program will do, with enough detail that it can be used to generate the program itself, this just begs the question: how do you write the spec? Such a complete spec is just as hard to write as the underlying computer program, because just as many details have to be an…

What he misses is that it's much easier to change the spec than the code. And if the cost of regenerating the code is low enough, then the code is not worth talking about.

Is it? If the spec is as detailed as the code would be? If you make a change to one part of the spec do you now have inconsistencies that the LLM is going to have to resolve in some way? Are we going to have a compiler, or type checker type tools for the spec to catch these errors sooner?

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#226

Post by sethev »

stephbook wrote: post #221

> It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. If the spec defines precisely what a program will do, with enough detail that it can be used to generate the program itself, this just begs the question: how do you write the spec? Such a complete spec is just as hard to write as the underlying computer program, because just as many details have to be an…

Program generation from a spec meant something vastly different in 2007 than it does now. People can and are generating programs from underspecified prompts. Trying to be systematic about how prompts work is a worthwhile area to explore.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#227

Post by [deleted] »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #222
stephbook wrote: post #221

> It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. If the spec defines precisely what a program will do, with enough detail that it can be used to generate the program itself, this just begs the question: how do you write the spec? Such a complete spec is just as hard to write as the underlying computer program, because just as many details have to be an…

What he misses is that it's much easier to change the spec than the code. And if the cost of regenerating the code is low enough, then the code is not worth talking about.

[deleted]

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#228

Post by kennywinker »

pjmlp wrote: post #126
kennywinker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shoe is what the shoe does. Except one shoe is made by children in a fire-trap sweatshop with no breaks, and the other was made by a well paid adult in good working conditions. The ends don’t justify the means. The process of making impacts the output in ways that are subtle and important, but even holding the output as a fixed thing - the process of making still matters, at least to the people making it.

Yet the people voting with their wallets seem to go with cheaper option, regardless of what hides behind it. Being shoes, offshoring, Webwidgets or AI generated code.

Sure. People go for the cheapest option that fits their requirements, mostly.

But we’re the shoemakers, not the consumers. It’s actually our job to preserve our own and our peers quality of life.

Cheapest good option possible doesn’t have to be the sweatshop - tho the shareholders of nike or zara would have you believe that - the labor movements of the 19th century proved that’s not the case.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#229

Post by siscia »

abreslav wrote: post #218
siscia wrote: post #214

What I found more useful is an extra step. Spec to tests, and then red tests to code and green tests. LLMs works on both translation steps. But you end up with an healthy amount of tests. I tagged each tests with the id of the spec so I do get spec to test coverage as well. Beside standard code coverage given by the tests.

When you translate spec to tests (if those are traditional unit tests or any automated tests that call the rest of the code), that fixes the API of the code, i.e. the code gets designed implicitly in the test generation step. Is this working well in your experience?

Yes it is passable.

Good enough that I don't review it.

Granted, it is a personal project that I care only to the point that I want it to work. There are no money on the line. Nothing professional.

I believe that part of the secret is that I force CC to run the whole est suites after it change ANY file. Using hooks.

It makes iteration slower because it kinda forces it to go from green to green. Or better from red to less red (since we start in red).

But overall I am definitely happy with the results.

Again, personal projects. Not really professional code.

Re: Kotlin creator's new language: talk to LLMs in specs, not English

#230

Post by slcjordan »

stephbook wrote: post #221

> It’s one of those things that crackpots keep trying to do, no matter how much you tell them it could never work. If the spec defines precisely what a program will do, with enough detail that it can be used to generate the program itself, this just begs the question: how do you write the spec? Such a complete spec is just as hard to write as the underlying computer program, because just as many details have to be an…

It actually makes sense that code is becoming amorphous and we will no longer scale in terms of building out new features (which has become cheap), but by defining stricter and stricter behavior constraints and structural invariants.
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